Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert) (44 page)

Alyea sipped a cup of delicate mint tea, appreciating the early-morning quiet, and waited for Eredion to speak. He sat across from her at the small breakfast table, studiously attending to his own cup of tea, his head tilting now and again as though to shake thoughts into a better focus.

In contrast to his finery of the day before, he wore a dun and brown outfit made of fine linen; it hung loose from his shoulders and hips, as though he’d lost weight himself, and his dark hair had a dull, dry look to it.

“Your mother,” Eredion said finally, “did her damnedest to throw me out last night.”

“And failed, apparently.”

“She couldn’t tell me the order came direct from you, and you’re the one in charge here these days. She didn’t care for that truth much.”

Alyea sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose; hearing echoes of just how bad that fight had been in the dryness of his voice. She resisted the urge to apologize for her mother’s attitude. That would only show weakness, and even with Eredion as close to a friend as she dared have at the moment, she knew better than to think he would allow friendship to get in the way of politics.
My job is protecting Sessin Family interests
, he’d said once: a clear warning not to ever really trust his intentions.

She saw a glint in his eye that told her he’d followed that thought; decided not to pursue the point. Instead she said, “Where’s Deiq? Did she manage to throw
him
out?”

Alyea half-hoped the answer would be
yes
. She was still more than a little aggravated with Deiq’s egotistical arrogance, his manipulative methods. She could have died from his damn
lesson
.

“He left before she could throw him out and hasn’t been back since. I’m not entirely sure where he is.” He looked uncomfortable for a moment, as though the admission pained him.

“Can’t you—” She touched her temple, uncertain whether she had it right; he shook his head.

“He won’t answer me, and I can’t get a fix on where he is if he won’t talk.”

“So he ran off to brood; so much for protecting me.”

Eredion looked up at her sharply, his dark eyebrows contracting into a scowl. “Don’t be an idiot, girl. And don’t pick a fight with me as a way of readying to confront your mother, either.”

Alyea set her teacup down hard and glared. Eredion returned it with equal intensity. After a moment, she dropped her gaze and grimaced, inclining her head in silent apology.

“Better,” he said. “Deiq’s not here right now because he’s afraid of you, Alyea.”

She looked up fast, truly shocked. “Afraid of
me? Afraid?
Are we talking about the same person?”

He nodded, unsmiling.

“Afraid,” Alyea muttered, and sipped tea, thinking about that.

The chabi game with Oruen came to mind; she decided to shift the conversation on a tangent, as if it were an
ayn
she might slide diagonally across a chabi board. Perhaps she could even turn the discomfort around onto Eredion and gain an advantage in this already-strange conversation. Afraid? Deiq wasn’t afraid of anything.

“Do you know, he told me once that you’re his father.”

To her surprise, Eredion laughed.

“That’s . . . something of a joke between us,” he said a bit ruefully. “Obviously, it’s not true.”

“Why did he lie?”

Eredion sobered. “It’s a convenient lie with deep roots,” he said. “All I can say is that when he told you that, he didn’t trust you. Beyond that you have to talk to him for an explanation.”

“Would he tell me the truth now?”

Eredion shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t really know how much he trusts you. Probably less than he trusts me, and that’s not far at all.”

She set her cup down on the table with a sharp click. “But you say he cares? That doesn’t make any damn sense, Eredion! When you love someone you trust them! You don’t
lie
to them! And you’re not
afraid
of them!”

He snorted. “You’ve still got a very narrow definition of love,” he noted. “But in any case, I did warn you not to call his feelings for you ‘love’. Don’t put human morals and standards onto his actions. He is what he is. He’s lied so often over the years I doubt even he knows the truth behind half his words any longer. And he’ll lie to you in a heartbeat if he thinks it’s best—for him, for you, for a larger cause. But he’ll always have a reason for the lie. Usually a damn good reason.”

“That’s not much comfort,” she said dryly. “So far I’ve heard nothing that endears him to me, Eredion.”

The Sessin lord’s mouth quirked. “I know. Deceitful, manipulative, ruthless, and dangerously charming doesn’t really add up to a nice picture, does it? But the same words could be used to describe Oruen. Or Scratha. Or me, for that matter. If you want simple honesty, Alyea, go find yourself a farmer at the edge of some tiny northern village. But don’t look at that farmer too closely, or you might be dismayed by what’s under his homespun.”

She refilled her cup, not looking at him, and thought about what he’d said. Her anger began to wither a little; had Deiq really believed she’d be fine, left alone with ordinary bandits? She tried to see it from Deiq’s point of view, and couldn’t quite manage.

“A human,” Eredion said after a while, “would lie for his own greed. A swindler out for money, a man sweeping a woman into bed. Small things. Small lies. Small lives. Deiq doesn’t care about personal power. He goes through life searching for something to believe in for a few years, something to funnel his tremendous energies into for as long as possible. His Farms are a good example: he developed a passion to make sure the southlands didn’t depend on the northern kingdom for food. Once they were established, he backed out and let humans take over. He only keeps his name on the Farms in order to protect the Farms from political shifts.”

“What’s his passion now?” Alyea asked, propping her chin on one hand and tilting the teacup slowly back and forth in the other.

“At the moment,” Eredion said, “I believe he’s about to embark on another mad quest to change the world. If he survives long enough.”

“Survives?” Alyea sat up straight, alarmed.

Eredion sighed and rubbed at one cheek. “Yes. Survives. Which brings me to what I need to finish explaining. I don’t know how to say any of this gently, so bear with me, please. And remember, too, that most of what I know comes from a number of very frank talks with Deiq. I doubt anyone beyond Heads of Family know some of what I’m about to tell you, and I think he’s told me secrets even most of
them
don’t know. So please don’t repeat this information carelessly.”

He waited for her nod, then drew a steadying breath, shut his eyes and said rapidly, as though the words actually hurt him, “Ha’reye and ha’ra’hain
aren’t human
. They need more than just physical food; not every day, but on a fairly regular basis. Desert lords were created, in part, to fill that need. For ha’reye and ha’ra’hain to feed from.”

“
What?
” Her cup slipped from her hand and splashed tea across the table.

Eredion opened his eyes and regarded her gravely, undisturbed by the liquid dripping into his lap. “Not a pretty picture at all, is it?” he said. “But that’s what it comes down to. I’ve heard a hundred flowery explanations and lovely words about
sharing
and
helping
that miss the point completely. I won’t hand you any of that nonsense. Something about a human’s willpower, a human’s spirit, inner strength, life, whatever you want to call it—Deiq’s never been able to really explain it to me—offers a piece of essential nourishment for ha’reye, and by extension, for ha’ra’hain.” He paused. “A bit humbling, isn’t it, to realize that in exchange for all your new strength and clarity and power you’ve become nothing more than . . . than a cow waiting to be milked.”

She stared at him, utterly appalled, unable to speak.

“I used to think it a noble sacrifice,” he said. “When I understood what it really meant, I was horrified. But over the years I’ve come to something of a balance between the two extremes.”

He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a knuckle.

“I suspect,” he said, “your thoughts at the moment are something like: Why didn’t anyone tell me before I became a desert lord? How could anyone willingly submit to something so horrible? Why doesn’t someone stop it? Am I right?”

She nodded mutely, unable to speak her revulsion aloud.

“The answer is pretty much the same for all those questions,” he said. “It keeps those who follow it on top of the stack. It’s all about power, Alyea; human ambition, human greed, human desires. The desert Families wouldn’t even have viable homes if not for the ha’reye and ha’ra’hain meddling with underground rivers and pushing water up into the Fortress wells. The desert lords wouldn’t have crowds simply melt away in front of them, everywhere they go; and if you haven’t had that happen to you yet, just wait. It’s a horribly exhilarating feeling, and damned seductive.

“You weren’t told;
nobody
is, anymore. I didn’t know.” His face wrinkled as though with painful memory. “Remember, there aren’t many true ha’ra’hain walking the surface. Other than the initial encounter during the trial of Ishrai, most desert lords these days go through their lives without ever seeing another ha’ra’ha or ha’rethe other than the one their Fortress hosts, which is probably the one who went through the trials with them.

“And with so much mixed blood in each fortress, the resident ha’rethe or ha’ra’ha can just . . . skim a bit here and there. Nobody even notices. I guarantee it was happening during Scratha Conclave, but you wouldn’t even have felt a tickle.”

Alyea shut her eyes and put a hand over her mouth, feeling deeply ill.

“Deiq hates it,” Eredion said. “He
loathes
it. I’ve met ha’ra’hain who think nothing of it, who take the milk, so to speak, without any compassion for the cow. Deiq would rather starve himself than take without permission, even though desert lords, by implication, have already given that consent. He insists on personal permission from each and all; but since most desert lords don’t even know the truth about this, getting permission usually means explaining first, and he hates the explanation almost as much as the need. If he’d been at full strength, the tath-shinn’s blow would have been like a mosquito bite to him. He would have sensed her coming half a mile away.

“He’s starving, Alyea. He’s been refusing to feed for a long damn time; I’m guessing for over fifty years. I’ve helped him a little bit over the last few days, but he won’t take enough because he doesn’t like inflicting pain, and it
hurts
if only one target is used. Even a small draw would kill an ordinary human.”

The silence seemed like a living thing writhing in her chest.

“So what. . . .” she said at last, thickly, “What am I supposed to do? Let
him. . . .” She stopped, nausea rising in her throat, and breathed hard through her nose until it subsided. “It’s obscene.”

Eredion sighed. “It is what it is,” he said. “One of the changes desert lords normally go through is an increased libido. Yes—I see someone did talk to you about that. Well, that’s tied in to this. As . . . compensation, you might say. Or incentive. Or coercion. Whatever you want to call it, it tends to . . . flare up when a ha’ra’ha is nearby. Especially a hungry or wounded one. And it masks—at least somewhat—the pain from the draw.” He paused, regarding her with a worried frown. “Only you don’t seem to be responding properly.”

She felt her face flare into hot color at a sudden memory: Deiq, his hands on her hips, looking up with what she’d taken for a fever-sparkle in his eyes. Then Eredion had shown up without announcement and chased her out—

“
Oh
,” she said, comprehension slamming like a brick into her stomach. “You—”

Eredion winced but kept eye contact.

“Yes. I stepped in that day because he asked me to. Because he didn’t want to hurt you. And I already knew . . . what he needed. He’s been trying to protect you from that. He wants to find a way to stop it from hurting so much.”

He paused with a grimace, as though remembering the pain; Alyea felt a hot stab of astonished guilt. Eredion had put himself in harm’s way—for her? And Deiq had asked him to?

“That’s what I mean,” Eredion went on, “when I say he cares. No other ha’ra’hain would even think of asking first, or of shorting themselves to save a human—or desert lord—pain. And until Deiq understands why you’re not leaping to offer what he needs, he won’t touch you. Because without that . . . that driven response, he’d probably hurt you more than normal. And he finds normal too high a price already.”

He drew a deep breath, let it out in a long sigh, and stood.

“That’s the end of that long speech, and all the explanations I have for you right now,” he told her. “I’ll leave you to think it over. And—” He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “If you want to talk to Deiq later, I think—he did drop a hint. I think you might find him on the west side of town. At the Northern Church Tower.”

Alyea shut her eyes and dropped her head into her hands. Of all the places in the world she did not want to enter, that was top on the list. Deiq had to know that.

Eredion made a noncommittal sound, then cleared his throat again and said, “I also have to warn you: your mother’s not taking this whole situation well at all, so be ready for her to come in, frothing at the mouth, soon after I leave. I’m going back to my suite at the palace; I don’t think you need me here any longer.”

He let himself out quietly, not looking back.

Alyea stared at the tiny puddles and drops of tea on the tabletop, her mind alternately spinning furiously and drifting blankly among the abstract patterns of moisture. At last the sound of the outer door to her suite opening shook her from her thoughts; she looked up to find her mother, white-faced and grim, regarding her from the doorway.

“I think we need to talk about just
who
is in charge in this household,” her mother said.

“Yes,” Alyea said, “I think we do, too.” She stood up. “But not right now. I have a more important conversation waiting first.”

“More important than
me
?” Her mother moved at an angle to block the doorway, her tone and expression outraged.

Alyea drew in a hard breath, stared into her mother’s eyes, and said, with flat certainty, “You will move out of my way, and let me leave. When I return, we will talk about the reality that I am in charge, and what that means for you. Right now, I am leaving.”

Lady Peysimun took two steps sideways, her face bone-white and her eyes wide with real fear. Alyea passed her without pause, and slammed the door behind.